The remarkable thing, however, is that the change to a more severe line took place not under Henry or his Protestant son, but under the most Catholic Sovereigns Philip and Mary.  It was by their orders that the first of the confiscations (which were to play so important a part in the later history of Ireland) was carried out.  By an Act passed in their reign the lands occupied by the O’Moores, O’Connors and O’Dempseys were confiscated and formed into the King’s and Queen’s counties, Leix and Offaly being renamed “Philipstown” and “Maryborough”; and a “Plantation” of English settlers was established.

And here it is well to pause for a moment and consider these confiscations, about which so much has been written.  That confiscations have taken place in every country is a plain fact of history.  There is probably no part of Western Europe where land is now held by the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants.  Forcible conquest and adverse occupation is nearly always the primary root of title.  But it is part of the policy of every civilized country to recognize what lawyers call “Statutes of limitations.”  When centuries have elapsed and new rights have grown up, it is impossible to rectify the wrongs of times long gone by.  Thus we cannot suppose that any future Government of Spain would ever recognize the title of the Moors in Africa to the properties from which their ancestors were driven by Philip IV; or that the Huguenots, now scattered over various countries, could ever succeed in recovering possession of the estates in France which were confiscated at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  And the only people who have a cause to complain, even on sentimental grounds, of the wrongs of past ages, are the lineal descendants of those who suffered ill-treatment.  No Englishman to-day can feel aggrieved because Saxons drove out Britons, or Normans Saxons.

But more than that:  the confiscation of the lands of rebels stands on a different basis, and has been so regarded in every country in the world, even New Zealand.  The lands confiscated by Philip and Mary were owned by the arch-rebel FitzGerald.  Naturally fertile and capable if properly cultivated of supporting a large population, they were at this time a wild pathless tract of forest and bog.  The ceaseless tribal wars had prevented their being drained and cleared; the miserable remnants of the Celtic tribes gained a precarious living by periodical raids on the more peaceful inhabitants of the Pale.  During the whole of the reign of Edward VI fighting had gone on in Leix and Offaly with great loss of life and at enormous expense to the English Government.  The object of the confiscation was not to drive out the few existing tribesmen; for the land, when cleared and drained, might well support them as well as the new settlers.  Nor was it to confer great estates on absentee proprietors, but to establish a fairly thickly settled district which might be a source of